Not many meteors caught but here is one for the record - November Orionid - this meteor stream was discovered by Sirko malau from the video meteor database. Recognize the constellation of Orion on the top right?

P/S The same region where days earlier a Nova(?) was discovered there (Eridanus) leading to a scramble to ask photographers to reexamine their Leonid images in the hope of finding out the brightest magnitude ( mag 1-2?!!!) prior to discovered date.

When the predicted rate is announced as 500 ( or later scaled down to 200), the public including the media take it as Hourly Rate 500 or 200 perhaps ignoring the 'Zenith' term of Zenith Hour Rate.

A simple worksheet above illustrate the poor LM sky to Predicted ZHR vs Hourly Rate ( HR) . Unless the LM is 6.6 which means 2^(6.5-6.5)=2^0=1 and radiant is directly overhead Sine(90)=1 you will never get the hour rate = ZHR. With our less than ideal LM - the worksheet says ~ 14 Leonids /HR can be seen during the peak. Recompute the above with a good dark site where LM is 6.3. Now you can see the HR is 147 (200Zhr pred), and (500Zhr pred).So the message is GO for a DARK SITE with good sky to appreciate the high hourly rate. Please also take note that while the shower members dominate during peak not all meteors seen were from Leonids - there are other active meteor streams and background sporadic too.

For coming Geminids ( high radiant around midnite) - if you keep the radiant within edges of your field of view you can check by extrapolation backward path of the meteor.. if it falls within the radiant area then high chance it is a Geminid (Gem) .....

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Leonids still active and detected in 6am slot .... this bright one 6:21amUT format of the x7 Leonids21:48:0421:41:3021:53:6022:18:5122:20:4122:21:26* ( image above)22:2607( New**- video of these Leonids posted at youtube)

02:56 - cloudy but gap let the meteor through ...but blockedFor those who had struggled to view from midnight till late 3:00amthe sky was really bad. Most of the dimmer meteor's tail would disappeared leaving a small portion of the luminous head.. a blip that could be easily missed.

6:05:21 - one Leonid in the 'clearer' side of the sky

6:24 am and was getting brighter,still a fast moving tadpole shaped Leonid on theupper right image with distinctive terminal burst!

Due to the weather condition - layers of thin clouds, it was difficult to see them visually as the dimmer tailed might be hidden in clouds so a tiny portion plus nucleus head left.[ Bright Star streaks in above stacking: Top right - 'Belt' stars , Rigel (Orion), middle Sirius (Canis Major), mid lower Canopus ]

Oct 21/22 (0 hrs - 06:0am local time ) - x20 ORI, x7 SPO, x1 oct, x1 ocuSky was cloudy most of the time. The highlite of the night was a visual detection of moderate speed electric blue tear drop shaped meteor around 10:58 magnitude -4 or brighter bearing AZ=200 elevation ~ 20-30. I was standing by my window looking out and saw this nice meteor coming down at 60 degree. Video system was on but no detection - blocked by the building.

Finally orionids showing up in small numbers.Sirius and Canopus dotted inthis composite stacked image . Time stamps (hr:min:sec) of the six AM orionids to give you a feel of when and how bright/dim they were